Parental Experience
by Coffin Liqueur
Summary: One-shot vignette. "My dads always say: if you love someone... shoot them and see what happens."


Lucien was not concerned. There was no reason to be. The bullet had not been silver, nor had it been blessed - pff, if any demon was foolishly audacious to bother handling a holy weapon long enough to bring it down here for anything less but a key duel, it was not him. In any case, Stan would recover. Grown demons didn't waste concern where there was truly nothing to be worried about.

(In the future, this mindset would come to make him a good father, or so he would find. His future child would certainly agree. Mental energy so often expended on concern was far better used on a warmer kind of care.)

But he was guilty. Both as objective fact and in feeling.

Stan hauled himself against one long-blood-encrusted wall of their home-sweet-lesser-lordly-palace. He groaned and doubled over, hand pressed over a wound somewhere between his lower ribs. His teeth gnashed as he bit to "catch" a louder sound. Blood ran between his fingers.

Underneath the shadow of his cowl, Lucien's eyes dulled. The half-moons of them waned into little tilted slivers, mirrored.

_ He'd _ done this. The groaning from an ally that, in many senses, he was supposed to have been syncing more and more with as they fought together. The blood.

With _ one _misstep in coordination.

It was a poor move, by any standards one could set for a partner in love _ or _ in war.

After a firm _ shut _of them and another grip at his side and a sidle further up the wall, Stan opened his eyes. Caught Lucien's. His brow knit. And yet, at the same time, he flashed him a smile. It was clearly effortful, in the half-ness of it.

_ Hey… why the long face? _ it was saying.

He was trying to reassure him by asking.

And Lucien did not answer so as not to create an echo chamber of guilt.

He didn't change the look on his face. He simply blinked once, slowly. Let his guilty, guilty line of sight travel down to the site of Stan's wound. Stan moved his hand - internal flinch, _ and yet he can read my moves perfectly fine _ \- and with a rattling exhale, Lucien held forth one of his own. Muttered, with the backing of the million distant, unholy ratlike whispers that a-clattered behind his voice, a series of incantations meant to strengthen the unholy.

_ A te, de l'essere principio immenso, _

_ Materia e spirito, ragione e senso… _

_ Ade due damballa… _

_ Sanguineum, frater meus… _

...He shut his eyes fully; bowed his head.

_ Quid stultius…! _

A fire burst around that hand bright as a firework. He averted his face slightly. He slow-blinked - solemnly - and he guided his palm over the area of the wound. Some part of him, ironically, praying that he could apologize for his misstep by showing that he could heal his counterpart's wounds blindly. It was a petty little challenge to himself, on some subconscious level, to be certain he could prove himself deserving after such a mistake.

How ironic - never would he ever have thought of it this way, as this was another thing demons didn't do.

But he was halfway trying to atone.

...And yet, without looking, he could see that Stan saw, and he blinked again. Just as somberly, in its slowness, and the bend around his eyes.

Another _ I'm sorry _ in the face of a _ what's wrong _ that… he could perceive without telepathy; without mind-reading. A kind of magic that ran deeper than magic.

"I'm feeling better already," Stan husked.

Just as Lucien had been able to hear him asking _ what's wrong _ without hearing at all, he heard a smile in that; a warm hollow in his chest from which it had swelled.

...He turned his face back forward with the pretense of checking whether or not he'd sealed the wound fully. Parsed past his palm that, if nothing else, the blood flow'd stopped. The fire began to fade.

And he finally turned his still-sad, apologetic eyes up to Stan's face. Confirmed the presence of that smile, and a hint of a wince tensing his cheek under his eye. Stan raised his hand - reached into his cowl, rested it on Lucien's cheek.

As his clawed thumb began to fumble and stroke, Lucien looked down again, eyelids lowered.

Still solemnly.

But comforted.

"...That was one crazy round back there, huh, Luce…?" Stan husked out with the shake and jump of a laugh.

Lucien _ forced _the initial sizzle-pop of a laugh, too.

But his breath continued to trail out hissing warmly.

"...Quite," he said.

_ Well, son, my advice to you is: if you love someone… shoot them, and see what happens! I know I shot your blue dad once, and let me say, there's nothing quite like how wretched you feel when it sinks in, yet seeing them look at you like you're still the most admirable thing in all of Hell or Heaven. _

_ Love truly has the power to do what nothing else quite can…! _


End file.
